Microsoft's Pricey New Surface Pro Is More Laptop Than Tablet

Microsoft has a message it wants you to take away when you look at its new hardware: Your laptop is for getting work done, your tablet is for playing, and the Surface Pro 3 is the device that will supplant them both.

The company unveiled the new portable touchscreen computer at a press event in New York today. The newest model in the Surface line is both bigger and more powerful than previous versions: 12 inches (up from 10.6) though still remarkably thin, and loaded with the latest Intel Core processors. The Core i5 versions will ship in June, with other configurations shipping before the end of August.

Which is almost enough time to save up the money you'll need to buy one. Pricing starts at $800 for the Core i3 version. A fully-loaded i7 device with the best storage options sits just shy of $2,000. And that's without the keyboard case, an essential add-on that costs an extra $130.

That's super-pricey for a tablet. But the new Surface is not just a tablet. Microsoft's presenters, which included CEO Satya Nadella and Corporate VP for Surface Computing Panos Panay, were relentless in their hammering of this point during the event.

Tim Moynihan tests out a Surface tablet during the Microsoft Surface unveiling.

Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

According to consumer research quoted by Microsoft, 96 percent of iPad owners also own a laptop – a statistic the company says points to fundamental differences in the ways people use each device.

"Tablets are designed for you to sit back and watch movies, read books, browse the web, snacking on apps," Surface chief Panay said during the event. "Laptops are not designed that way at all… They're designed for editing, they're designed for making. There's a design point, and they're made that way for a reason."

And then tablets weren't mentioned much at all after that.

Instead, Panay focused on the ways the new Surface Pro stacks up to laptops. At 0.35 inches (9.1mm) thick, Microsoft claims the Surface Pro 3 is the thinnest Intel Core i7 device ever made. Panay twice placed the new Surface Pro on a scale – and once dropped it to showcase its resilience. He was also quick to note how much thinner and lighter it is compared to the MacBook Air: 1.7 pounds, compared to 2.38 pounds for Apple's 11-inch laptop.

So the point of all this is that the Surface Pro 3 is much lighter than a laptop, but more of a workhorse than an iPad. That's not a departure from previous versions of Surface Pro. Nor is the fact that it runs Windows 8.1 Professional, giving it the ability to run full desktop apps. With this edition, however, the company has honed the hardware to make it even more laptop-like than before. Not exactly thick, but thicker than you'd expect a tablet to be. Still, it's an incredibly light load in your bag.

Tablets and keyboards were handed out to the press to use during the Microsoft Surface unveiling.

Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

The new Surface's larger display splits the difference between that of a tablet and a laptop: At 12 inches diagonally, its tack-sharp 2160-by-1440 screen looks great. It also has a 3:2 aspect ratio instead of 16:9, which is a better shape for laptopping, but a bit awkward for tabletting. The extra real estate shines, however, when you're using the Surface Pro 3 in desktop mode—as you would a laptop—giving multiple open windows much more room to breathe. New design and engineering touches also enhance the laptop-like experience. It has a back-mounted kickstand like its predecessors, but it's a completely reengineered version of the hinge that allows for about 130 degrees of motion with the ability to lock sturdily at every point along the way. The Surface Pro 3 isn't fanless, but it's close to silent. Little vent holes are hidden around the edges of the device, and a paper-thin fan circulates air inside the Surface Pro to keep the CPU cool.

Most of these hardware tweaks have served to make the Surface more laptoppy, but one tablet-like element has been added: Its touch-sensitive Start button has been moved so it sits at the bottom of the device in portrait mode rather than landscape mode.

Although Apple has traditionally shunned the use of styli on its own touchscreen devices, Microsoft is embracing the idea with its own Bluetooth pen that ships with each configuration of the Surface 3, even the cheap ones. Using the pen, you can input handwritten text that can be converted (via OCR technology) to type. This works in productivity apps, as well as fun ones such as the New York Times Crossword. Adobe VP of Experience Design Michael Gough was also on-stage to show how the pen and multi-touch gestures have been programmed into an upcoming version of Photoshop optimized for Surface.

So even while playing up how laptop-like the Surface is in terms of performance, screen design, and built-in software features, it's still missing the one thing that leads most people to purchase a laptop instead of a tablet: a keyboard.

A Surface tablet and different color keyboards on display during the Microsoft Surface unveiling.

Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

Microsoft makes its own keyboard for Surface, the TypeCover, which magnetically attaches to the bottom edge. There's a new TypeCover (an extra $130) which has a much larger trackpad and a second magnetic strip to prop the keys up at a more comfortable angle while it's sitting on your lap. It works extremely well; a sure improvement. The keys react nicely, the trackpad works fine, and the positioning is more comfortable this time around, but it's still not the same thing as a real keyboard. There's also a desktop dock (sold separately for $200) which looks cool and lets you use the Surface Pro with full-on peripherals.

The Surface Pro 3 looks like an amazing computer, but it may ultimately be a superb foundation for the world's best thin-and-light laptop. With a light-but-sturdy clamshell design and a solid metal keyboard, it would be one hell of a competitor to the MacBook Air. But all the comparisons to laptops Microsoft tossed out at the launch event just served to remind us that it wasn't one. The fact that the Surface is still Wi-Fi only with no 4G option, and the silence surrounding the future of Windows RT — the version of Windows optimized for ARM processors in cheaper touchscreen devices — served as hints that Microsoft had all but given up on the tablet-as-tablet experience.